Featured Game: Left 4 Dead

Not for cheapo netbooks

Year: 2008

Genre: First-Person Shooter + Survival Horror

Recommend: Depends

If you're wanting to play Left 4 Dead on a netbook, be prepared to spend a little money, 'cause anything with GMA in the name ain't gonna cut it. Those with ION or Radeon graphics, though, can gear up for some epic zombie-destroying fun.

What you'll need

Review and Awards

For the most part, Left 4 Dead raked in positive reviews from all around the board, with an average of 89% from aggregator sites. IGN praised the game, saying "It's almost pitch perfect in how it captures the tension and the action of a Hollywood zombie movie." Gamespot disapproved of Left 4 Dead's "limited map selection," and felt the game got repetitive at times. Left 4 Dead acquired no less than 5 "Best Multiplayer Game of 2008" awards, among others.

Tips

Avoid the witch.

No, really, don't do it!

 

A Few Words

First, if you'd like to have your favorite game featured on the blog, either write a comment on one of my posts or send an email to kory.l.hansen-[AT]-gmail.com. I would be more than happy to take a look at your game.

Second, increasing game performance can be as easy as running an installer and rebooting. These installers contain graphics drivers, pieces of software used to communicate with the integrated graphics processor inside your netbook. Updating the existing drivers on your system can add new features, fix bugs, or increase performance. To update your drivers, visit the following websites:

*Intel GMA 950 - intel.ly/LVHfWQ
*Intel GMA 3150 - intel.ly/qyy1Os
*Intel GMA 36x0 - intel.ly/Llt7VX
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows XP - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_xp-32.aspx#1
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows Vista/7 32-bit - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-32.aspx
*AMD Radeon HD on Windows Vista/7 64-bit - http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx

An Introduction to AMD's Fusion CPU's: Zacate

Along with Ontario, AMD released a more powerful line of mobile Fusion processors codenamed Zacate. These are designed for bigger netbooks and small laptops. There are 4 flavors of Zacate to choose from, 3 of which are dual-core. The only single-core, the E-240, is clocked at 1.5 GHz with a Radeon HD 6310 running at 500 MHz. Keep in mind that the Radeon HD 63x0 series is nothing more than a faster version of the HD 62x0 series. Moving on to the dual-cores, the E-300 runs at 1.3 GHz with its GPU at 488 MHz. The E-350 works at 1.6 GHz, and the GPU goes 4 MHz faster. Finally, the E-450's CPU is a tad faster at 1.65 GHz. Unlike the Ontario C-60, the E-450 does not get a CPU speed boost under load; however, the GPU does, clocking between 508 and 600 MHz. Zacate processors are the best of all mentioned so far for gaming, although the chassis housing them is almost guaranteed to be bigger than 10.1".